One Way Or Another
by Twinings
Summary: It's hard to believe, but villains can find love, too.


_Note: written for the Free-For-All-Fic-For-All at the AskTheSquishykins tumblr._

_Prompt: Scarecrow/Ivy romantic pairing_

_Apparently I'm not allowed to center my scene breaks now?  
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><p>When Pamela Isley claimed to have turned over a new leaf, Batman was skeptical.<p>

When Jonathan Crane claimed the same, he was more so.

When the two of them decided to settle down _together…_

Batman turned up for the first time the day after the wedding, a bare-bones affair with the justice of the peace. Pam seemed happy. But she had seemed happy the _last_ time she got married, and that had been a scam.

Jonathan seemed happy, too. And he had _never_ seemed happy. So Batman surreptitiously took a sample of his hair for analysis. It turned out to be a normal human hair. He meant to reexamine the sample in a week, but there was an incident with Ra's al Ghul, and when he returned from Tibet, the sample had been misplaced.

He came back not long after, to speak to Jonathan alone at his new, honest job at the used book store. Crane didn't have the drugged look of a man under the influence of Poison Ivy's pheromones. He seemed a little subdued, but almost cheerful in spite of it. He looked Batman in the eye and answered his questions without a fuss.

Either one of them was blackmailing the other, or Arkham had finally found a cocktail of medications that worked. After a few months, distracted by one of the Joker's schemes, he simply stopped checking up on them. Soon they moved to a house in the suburbs. Batman set his systems to monitor them, but nothing ever came up. The Cranes were living a quiet life as law-abiding citizens.

After a year of silence, Batman came for a visit, less because he still thought they were up to something than because he simply had the free time.

He found Pam sitting on the front porch, cradling a baby boy who seemed intent on cramming her hair in his mouth.

Batman approached with an ominous scowl. Pam smiled up at him.

"I thought you couldn't have children," he graveled.

"I couldn't. I'm fully human now. I'm cured, Batman!" She looked like she was going to hug him. He drew back.

The baby did look like Jonathan, except for the eyes. His eyes were as green as Pam's.

He questioned both new parents, if only briefly, but aside from being bleary from lack of sleep, they both seemed perfectly normal as could be. He obtained new samples from both of them, and from the baby, this time with permission. After the analysis, if their story checked out, he would leave them alone.

Did he believe them? Maybe, maybe not. But part of him wanted to.

They did seem happy.

_-0-_

After Batman left, Pamela handed the baby to Jonathan.

"Nap time," she said with a smile. Past nap time, really. Junior was going to be unbearable at bedtime.

Pam grabbed the laundry basket from the bathroom and headed to the basement, humming under her breath.

"Tall and something-something and lovely, da-da-da-da hmm-mm-mm something…"

She set the washer, added the detergent, and turned to check on the coffin-sized tank in the corner, still humming.

She could see some movement through the faintly glowing green goo inside. As she leaned over it, a fist came up to pound sluggishly on the transparent lid. Pam knocked back, now whistling. She checked the breathing tube, the nutrient input, the waste removal system. As always, everything was fine. In almost two years, she had never once had to open it up.

She had made some improvements since she last tried this, on poor stupid Steven. Junior's hair was a perfect genetic match for any child she might have had with Crane. "Jonathan's" sample was straight from the real Crane's head. All three were indistinguishable from normal human hairs.

She had done well, but the best thing of all was that she had chosen someone Batman didn't _really_ want to save. He would give up, and she could go on harvesting the real Jonathan Crane's genetic material for as long as she wanted.

She could see him clawing at the glass. He had been screaming when she put him in there. She wondered if he'd ever stopped.

Still singing quietly to herself, Pamela Crane turned off the lights and went upstairs to her husband and son.


End file.
